Afoot in England Book

BOOKS B Y W. H. HUDSON Green Mansions Tales of the Pampas Birds and Man A Little Boy Lost Afoot in England Ralph Herne Lands End A LFRED-A - KNOPF JVew York p Q o COPYRIGHT 1922 BY ALFREDA-KLN OPF, INC. PUBLISHED, MAY, 1922 SECOND PRINTING, SEPTEMBER, 1922 THIRD PRINTING, JANUARY, 1923 NEW EDITION, MARCH, 1926 BAYS WATER EDITION, FEBRUARY, 1929 SIXTH PRINTING, FEBRUARY, 1933 SEVENTH PRINTING, JANUARY, 1941 Manufactured in the United States of America Contents . Guide Books An Introduction, 9 . On Going Back, 21 . Walking and Cycling, 33 IV. Seeking a Shelter, 41 V. Wind, Wave, and Spirit, 52 VI. By Swallow field, 76 VII. Roman Calleva, 87 Fill. A Cold Day at Silchester, 95 IX. Rural Rides, 103 X. The Last of his Name, 131 XI. Salisbury and its Doves, 145 XII. Whitesheet Hill, 153 XIII. Bath and Wells Revisited, 161 XIV. The Return of the Native, 177 XV. Summer Days on the Otter, 185 XVI. In Praise of the Cow, 193 Contents CHAPTER XV 11. An Old Road Leading Nowhere, 200 XV 111. Erans combe, 209 XIX. Abbotsbury, 220 XX. Salisbury Revisited, 230 XXI. Stonehenge, 239 XXII. The Village and The Stones, 254 XXIII. Following a River, 266 XXIV. Troston, 2.7 XXV. My friend Jack, 298 AFOOT IN ENGLAND Chapter One Guide-Books An Introduction Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we have more than any other country possibly more than all the rest of the universe together. Every county has a little library of its own guides to its towns, churches, abbeys, castles, rivers, mountains finally, to the county as a whole. They are of all prices and all sizes, from the diminutive paper-covered booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound octavo volume which qosts eight or ten or twelve shillings, or to the gigantic folio county history, the huge repository from which the guide-book maker gets his materials. For these great works are also guide-books, containing everything we want to learn, only made on s, o huge a scale as to be suited to the coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than of little ordinary men. The wonder of it all comes in when we find that these books, however old and compara tively worthless they may be, are practically never wholly out of date. When a new work is brought out dozens appear annually and, say, five thousand copies sold, it does not throw as many, or indeed any, copies of the old book out of circulation it supersedes nothing. If any man can indulge in the luxury of a new up-to-date guide to any place, and gets rid of his 9 Afoot in England, old one a rare thing to do, this will be snapped up by poorer men, who will treasure it and hand it down or on to others. Editions of 1.860-50-40, and older, are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study or reference. Any one can prove this by going the round of a dozen second-hand booksellers in his own district in London. There will be tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and new, but few guide books in some cases not one. If you ask your man at a venture for, say, a guide to Hampshire, he will most probably tell you that he has not one in stock then, in his anxiety to do business, he will, perhaps, fish out a guide to Derbyshire, dated 1854 a shabby old book and offer it for four or five shillings, the price of a Crabber in eight volumes, or of Gibbons Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound in calf. Talk to this man, and to the other eleven, and they will tell you that there is always a sale for guide-books that the supply does not keep pace with the demand. It may be taken as a fact that most af the books of this kind published during the last half-century many millions of copies in the aggregate axe still in ex istence and are valued possessions. There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a people we run about a great deal and having curious minds we naturally wish to know all there is to be known, or all that is interesting to know, about the places we visit...Read More